


Light brigade

by dimtraces



Series: Sign up [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Finn-centric, Force-Sensitive Finn, Gen, Maul's eternal quest for an apprentice, Post-Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Subterfuge, if Disney refuses to give me Jedi Finn I'll have to get creative
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-02
Updated: 2019-06-02
Packaged: 2020-04-06 18:30:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19068238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dimtraces/pseuds/dimtraces
Summary: On a solo mission to recruit new members for the battered Resistance, Finn meets the survivor of an ancient war.





	Light brigade

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: Panic attacks, mention of vomit, brief description or mention of canon massacres (Tuanul, Hosnian system, Alderaan), mention of past child abuse, violence, combat deaths of minor characters, mention of suicide, mention of torture, stalking.

It’s one-sixty standard days after the end, a late afternoon with awful humidity and the deep-spine ache of a brewing storm. It’s one-sixty-five after the end, or one-sixty-three, or one-sixty-four, depending on the count— _Slip, the Hosnian system, FN-2187_ —but mostly it’s a hundred and sixty days after. After the death of the hero Luke Skywalker. After the annihilation of most of the Resistance, in the First Order’s assaults on D’Qar and Crait and several other outposts they only heard about—or, more to the point, _didn’t_ —days later. That’s the date that matters. The event that led Finn to this narrow alley off the deserted main street of Rishi’s ninety-third largest city.

He’s surveilling a small picturesque bar. He’s counting potential threats, counting up the names of the dead he remembers, but mostly, he’s just counting down down the minutes until he meets with a sorely needed potential new ally.

A hundred and sixty days ago, the Resistance lost.

The First Order has won, though few on Rishi seem to know or care. They haven’t caught up with the news yet. To them, it’s still twenty, ten, five years ago, when the Order was at most a small reactionary challenger. Barely a blip on any radar but General Organa’s. It looked all-knowing, all-controlling, all-powerful to FN-2187 and every other trooper and probably even Phasma—rest in pieces—but like everything else, the total domination the Order projected to those who grew up in it, back then, was a lie. On the first leg of their flight from Crait Finn eavesdropped a lot and he talked to everyone not currently crying—and some that were but seemed to want company anyway—in order to hear about history from a less biased perspective but mostly to mute the panic galumphing in his head. The Order was such a small gnat that General Organa couldn’t even get the money for a preemptive strike authorized by the New Galactic Senate.

It was tiny.

Invisible.

Multiplying like a virus, and then it struck. Almost five months ago, for a few awful days, it was one of two factions desperately warring for control.

Tuanul. The Hosnian system. Takodana. Starkiller. D’Qar. Crait. Now, the Order is the only major consolidated power structure in the known galaxy, give or take a few criminal conclaves and some multi-planet corporate production chains. The one bully left. It doesn’t have anything like the awesome reach of the Old Republic, _one government from Bonadan to Imynosoph_ as the textbooks said, or even the slow-healing tatters of the New Republic before it burned. It doesn’t have that reach _yet_.

Its total domination is inevitable.

Finn had warned Rey and Solo and the small orange pirate woman, a long time ago. ‘They'll slaughter us,’ he’d told them, ‘there is nothing we can do but run,’ and that was before he witnessed how little the Hero Generals of the Rebellion could do against Kylo Ren. Before he watched Solo get slaughtered. Before he heard the death-screams of trillions of people, obliterated instantly, many parsecs away.

In that bar on Takodana, he still believed that the Resistance was a resurgent army, secretly spoiling to take on the legions of the First Order. _(Finn will never forget what he felt, the first time he heard of them, though name and face of the boy who decided it would scare him straight are long gone._ One day, this will all be over _, FN-2187 told himself, curled up awake and trembling on his narrow barracks bed._ I’m not alone. I’m not the only one who doesn’t believe in the Order. They won’t win. One way or the other. I will get out. I won’t be alone. And if I don’t… _A shudder. The secret talisman lost some of its luster._ If I don’t: the Resistance will still come and burn it all down _.)_

He knows better now. They’re not the heroes of furtive legend. Not a horror story to shock silence into small crying stormtrooper cadets. They’re not even really an army anymore.

The Resistance are just two hundred people mourning their dead.

_Two._

_Double zero_.

That’s what Kaydel had announced, wild-eyed and shock-sweaty, after three sleepless days of calling and disconnecting and rerouting and encrypting and calling again, every personal frequency she’d remembered or been read from scraps of flimsi another survivor had kept sewed into the lining of their boots. _Two hundred_. Finn would put them at around eight hundred survivors total, generously factoring in the uncontactable and the ones he won’t have been informed about out of a lingering sense of distrust, but still—it’s basically a rounding error of people. It’s not even a tenth of the number of troopers in FN-legion alone. And Skywalker’s dead. They’ve _lost_.

He’d wanted to run, back then, before the Hosnian system. Almost did, and really, would it even have made that much of a difference? If he hadn’t joined forces with the Resistance to try and save Rey? Rey would have escaped anyway, since that’s what she did. She’s just that cool. She’s _Rey_. The Resistance would have still been fucked, give or take an exploded Starkiller Base.

And Finn would have still been frequenting small out-of-the-way bars on planets as-yet below the Order’s radar. He’d have still been watching every second he can of local holonet newscast, ears pricked for any mention of battle or unexplainable communications breakdowns with nearby planets. He would have still been afraid.

The only difference, really, is that he wouldn’t be meeting with people in those bars. He wouldn’t be recruiting. He wouldn’t be throwing anyone else’s life away on top of his own.

He wouldn’t have to convince anyone else to sign over themselves, for a war that they will not ever win.

When Poe had brought up the need for recruitment, four days after the end, Finn had supported him completely, and not just out of affection. _(They’d huddled in the increasingly rank and grimy main area of the Falcon, talking strategy with General Organa and General Chewbacca and Major Kalonia and a dozen more. Kaydel had just reported their numbers, and the path was obvious._

_‘The Order is evil. People need to know that they have a chance, that we will stand by their side, and they will join us. What do you say?’ Poe’s eyes were red-rimmed and bright. Finn smiled back at him._

_‘We’ve just been holed up on our bases, completely disconnected,’ Avga added. ‘That’s why no-one came when we called for aid. We met those fuckers on the battlefield, but this is not a war of equals. Mobilization is where it’s at, and organizing. Subterfuge. We need to build a base. We just need to get out there and talk to people.’_

_Chewbacca warbled something that apparently translated to, ‘I will talk to Lando.’_

_In the end, Finn proposed they all split up into small isolated cells. It’s just sensible: troopers make up the bulk of the First Order’s forces, and none of their training ever covered_ identifying _the enemy. There aren’t enough officers or special agents to cover the galaxy, and much fewer if you subtract the cowards and the layabouts. The more they split their focus, the easier it’ll be to slip through. The Resistance need to cover ground quickly, talk to as many people as possible; they’ll be less conspicuous, and if someone gets caught the Resistance won’t be vaporized in its entirety. This way, at least, it won’t be quick. Maybe the last few will even manage to die of old age in hiding, but Finn held that one back.)_

Recruitment is their only option, if the Resistance want to delay their inevitable failure. As long as they replenish the pool of fighters quicker than the Order can pick them off, they’ll at least be able to keep going. Finn knows that. Even if the Resistance are less happy about risking their cannon fodder than he was taught to expect, if General Organa stares stoically out the viewscreen at her troops getting vaporized not because she doesn’t care but because it’s the price they all have to pay for the good of the galaxy, it’s still a basic calculation of warfare.

When the last body gets blown apart, it’s over. So recruit some more.

Finn’s joined another army. There’s no point in lying to himself about that. He just wishes that back then, signing up for the mission, for the Resistance, for doing the right thing, for staying and dying alongside his friends, running on nothing but fumes and terror and three hours of bad sleep when he was asked and he answered—when he made official what everyone already assumed anyway—that he’d considered: just how hard it was going to be.

No, not hard. Impossible.

Poe’s calls are full of new friends. He’s scheduled to check in with Finn bi-weekly—though sometimes he calls twice a day—a lifeline after they split up seventy days ago to pursue diverging leads. Every word brims with life, with stories of the people he’s met and sent onwards, and Finn gets it. Talking to Poe, who wouldn’t be kindled with hope and fight? Rey is the last student of the legendary Luke Skywalker, and also, she’s great. She’s _Rey_. Rose knows the underbelly of the glittering worlds and just how to hit the pain-points. Finn didn’t ask for General Organa’s comm info, since he’ll be damned if he’ll compromise the operational security he proposed in the first place, but surely few will have denied her a hearing. Chewbacca is very persuasive, he’s been told. And so on.

Honing in on potential recruits isn’t very difficult. There’s no dearth of decent people in the galaxy, and whenever Finn is lost for words, he just thinks about Poe’s conviction, or how Rose would explain their problems. He knows how to stay inconspicuous. If nothing else, he’s had decades of intensive training in going, _oh force, please don’t look at me_. He misses Rey, he misses Rose, he misses Poe, he misses Beebs chirping at three in the damn morning, every day they call and every they don’t, but loneliness is another thing the Order taught well. At least now, somewhere out under the same stars, there are people who like him back. They’re far, and in perpetual danger that keeps Finn awake more nights than that overenthusiastic robot ever did, but they’re also tough and amazing, and he’d trust their ability over anything, law of gravity included. None of that’s the real issue.

Despite the loneliness and constant terror, this mission would be the best he’s ever had, if he wasn’t sent out here to convince people to fight.

But he was. And he isn’t Poe, or Rey, or Leia Organa.

All Finn has to offer is the First Order’s atrocities.

He’s met with fifty people now. Twenty-nine have promised to set up early warning systems for themselves and their neighbors, to create newsletters and workshops and kilometers of networked escape tunnels. Three have gone off the grid.

But he hasn’t recruited a single one.

He’s failing even the most generous metrics.

Still, there’s nothing he can do but to try again. He’s made his choice now. Finn will go down with the Resistance: Poe and Rey and Rose will never accept that they’ve already lost, and he can’t desert his friends.

Half an hour left now until the current attempt, a meeting with a local mechanic of sorts. Finn got his comm info from the previous contact—after the DJ disaster, he tries not to meet with anyone not vouched for if at all possible—and when he called, the image was dark and scrambled. All Finn knows about him is his hatred for the Empire, which the man muttered about for a full minute in his posh accent after Finn got him talking, disdain for all who would claim its footsteps, and very deep-seated paranoia. He wouldn’t even tell Finn his name. Apparently, he’ll be easy enough to find. There’s rarely more than two people out on a mid-week afternoon in this small restaurant in Rishi’s ninety-third largest city, he argued, especially with the recent weather.

“Fair enough,” Finn mutters. The main street’s been deserted for the whole hour he’s been watching, except for… in front of the restaurant, a young nautolan woman is now crouching, clad in a black apron over her smart pantsuit. A tiny nametag’s affixed that Finn can’t read from this distance, but no matter: open door, uniformed woman. Probably not the mechanic then. She must be staff, out on a smoke break. She’s sucking on a small tube and coughing out yellow mist, and then she stands in the cloud until it dissipates. Even more humidity. Finn’s sweating by proxy. He doesn’t miss much from his old life, but one jungle training day they were given some aircon armor…

She crouches down again, oblivious to Finn’s presence, one hand on her vaporator and the other ruffling the leaves of a cluster of pink pavement flowers.

When Finn’s eyes return—twenty to meetup now—she’s still there. _Early dinner break? Slow day? Slacker with insufficient supervision? Something more sinister?_ Her eyes turn in the direction of Finn’s alleyway, and he ducks, alarmed, but they pass over it, until she’s staring straight down the wide street. Finn follows her gaze, and _oh_. She’s watching the sundown.

It’s peeking through a torn hole in the storm clouds, and then it dips below the mountain. As the light slowly dies, the whole street is wreathed, _writhing,_ in hot red and orange, and—

Finn almost, almost succeeds in not returning to the fire of Tuanul. The pyre of livestock, huts, villagers. The smoke. The smell, so thick it wormed its way through the helmet filter.

Fuck, that smell.

The nautolan is gone when Finn manages to look up again, and there’s still no-one else out here. No-one who watched him kneeling, eyes shut and heaving up his breakfast, careful not to get anything on his jacket. Finn decides to be grateful. No-one to judge. No-one will report him to Phasma, not ever again. She’s dead. Ten to meetup.

Might as well go in now and get a good table.

The door gives a pleasant jingle when Finn enters. It’s the only way out, it seems, bar the two massive front windows flanking it. That already narrows the seating options considerably: he might be hidden from outside view in one of the booths tucked in the corner beside the bar, but he would also, if it comes to it, be fucked. There haven’t been any signs of First Order activity in the region yet, but you can never be too careful. Never lose sight of the exit unless you are prepared to die.

_(‘I know where the nearest escape pods are,’ Finn declared, hours after the end had begun._

_‘’Course you do,’ Rose replied, and Finn still feels the sting he’d been meant to feel, the scorn. The gaping distance between their lives: FN-2187 had known every detail of every route to every escape pod on Starkiller Base and the Finalizer and every other ship he’d ever been on. Each had come with its own fantasies attached, of how he’d use it to get away, if only he could get a pilot. Though he’d been much younger when he first learned to watch the doors. Stormtrooper common sense, passed down the cohorts, holds that doors ameliorate the risk of losing one’s head to Kylo Ren’s tantrums.)_

There’s only one other customer inside: a bald ancient man of a species Finn can’t quite place, with horns and a patterned face almost like a zabrak, but in stark red and black instead of the customary muted browns. The characteristics should be familiar. Finn was enrolled in two modules on the biology of all galactic species, back when Phasma had decided he’d follow in her boots as an officer. ‘All species’… in retrospect, he should have known better than to trust even that. A gnarled walking stick is leaned against his chair. No tell-tale bulges of a blaster straining the man’s tight black shirt, or the loose trousers.

At any rate, the man is sat at the table to the left of the exit.

The best table. The one Finn would have picked.

The contact? But he should’ve recognized Finn then, and there’s no sign of that at all. He doesn’t even look up when Finn clears his throat. Head bent, nursing a big glass filled with clear liquid. No tiny jerk when the entrance chimed, so he’s not even paying attention. A local drunk?

A massive inconvenience, anyway, if he’s not the mechanic. The old man might only be pretending to be oblivious, so Finn can’t have a conspiratory meeting just one table down, eliminating all the prime candidates for easy exit access. There’s also the door to the kitchen, right beside the bar, but if the nautolan—she’s polishing glasses now, he was right about her job—if she went out front to smoke, there probably won’t be an exit back there. He nods at her and takes a trip to the toilets, but there are no ways outside there, either, not even windows big enough to squeeze through.

It’s enough to ratchet up Finn’s discomfort, when he takes a seat at the window-table furthest from the old man. No-one is looking at him—in the reflection in the window, he can see the old man staring down at his shiny glass, and the bored bartender stacking a massive pyramid of limes—but someone is watching. Someone knows him. A cold sensation’s running down the synthskin patch in his spine. It’s just nerves, though. There’s no-one approaching the restaurant. He’s safe. He’s safe.

It’s a welcome distraction, when the bartending waitress or vice versa comes over with the menu. Her smile is bright. “Are you waiting for someone?”

“Yeah.” Fifteen past meetup now. “He told me he might run a little late, though. Could I get a drink first?”

The nautolan returns with a light beer that would probably be delicious of it wasn’t for the lingering taste of vomit, and another one, a half-hour later. This time, she also introduces herself as Ahn Artega—“Jero Pava,” Finn replies quickly—and offers to explain the menu, a muted sympathy in her eyes. She must think Finn’s being stood up. She’s probably right. The mechanic sounded like a sensible man—what’s paranoia but extreme sensibleness, in this galaxy—and tangling with the Order is anything but.

“It’s no trouble, Jero. You’ve come at the right time.” Ahn takes the seat opposite Finn, grinning. “Or the wrong one. Early evenings are always quiet, this place doesn’t start buzzing until ten o’clock if it does. Anyway, this is my papa’s place, and I’m sure you’ve never had any food like it in your life! I know for a fact that this is the only Alderaani restaurant within four quadrants, if not the entire Triellus Trade Route!”

 _Is it worth the risk of asking Poe for General Organa’s comm number over this?_ When Finn might be getting followed? But he’s been covering his tracks carefully, and it’s just paranoia, and if he was Organa…

“We have a lot of the original spices too, because great-grandfather set up his kitchen garden here before the Destruction of Alderaan. He was homesick a lot after he left for my great-gran.” She toys with Finn’s napkin. “A lot of the original vegetables are extinct now, though. Especially the ones from the south polar region, where our family is from, so we mostly serve Aldera City cooking—it was an intergalactic hub before, you know, so they used a lot of ingredients that weren’t native to Alderaan in the first place—give me a second. Mister, a refill?”

While she brings the old man another massive glass of his poison, Finn studies the laminated flimsi menu. There are still pictures printed onto it, mostly of a family at different celebrations. Marriage. Life day. Gathered around a baby with unruly red tentacles, probably either Ahn herself or her mother. One of the pictures, though, he’s seen before: a young human girl in white with a crown of braids, flanked by a tall blue-clad man and a woman in a regal blue dress.

“That’s Princess Leia Organa, bless her memory.”

“What?!” Finn chokes on his beer.

He might as well quit now. Without Organa’s indomitable resolve, not even Poe will be enough to keep the Resistance from outright collapse.

It’s not that he has somehow missed the news of her death, though, he realizes when Ahn keeps on talking. “The last Royal of Alderaan. She survived the Destruction, you know? The Death Star. She was a Senator back then, one of only hundreds of thousands off home when the Empire attacked. It’s such a shame she’s not a household name anymore. Leia Organa was a remarkable woman, founder of the New Republic, even Chief of State. She _was_ the New Republic, really. Papa gave me a biography of her, and I read it over and over, I nearly followed her into politics. Good thing I didn’t. The restaurant saved me. Five whole planets, gone like that. Such a loss. All those people. All those politicians. And Princess Leia, worst of all. Another Destruction. We never learned anything, did we?”

Finn could tell her that General Organa survived that massacre. That she was away, fighting its perpetrators, just like the last time. He could talk of what she did after politics didn’t work, of how she was the first to recognize the new threat, that she built the Resistance. That she’s most likely out recruiting people to her war right at this very moment.

He doesn’t: he doesn’t want Ahn to join up. He doesn’t want to tear her away from her family, doesn’t want her to go the way of Solo and Skywalker and Ackbar and Jeym and Cypress and Tabala and Meta and Niv and Asty and Paige and Ziff and thousands whose names Finn never asked. Tuanul. The Hosnian system. Crait. He doesn’t want her to be just another body on the pyre.

He doesn’t want her to _die_.

Alderaan was just a footnote in FN-2187’s history lectures, the core world that squandered its fortune and got punished for it. Then, it was a whisper on the cramped Falcon, a ‘H _ow could they? Again?’_ A _‘My family was on Hosnia Third, General Organa, the pain, you survived, can you tell me how?’_ There is so little of it left, and he wants no part in the destruction. Not one life, not to supplement two hundred against a thousand legions, not for a war they cannot win. This is a tiny restaurant in little city on a small insignificant planet off the major trade routes, and the First Order might never come here. Finn decides it may be the only safe place left after the end, and he only half-thinks he’s lying.

Unless someone gets wind of the deserter stormtrooper trying to recruit Resistance fighters in here.

The mechanic’s a bust, anyway. Finn doesn’t stay for dessert or drinks, slipping out as soon as the restaurant begins to fill up. He writes his comm number on his napkin, crosses it out, scribbling instead, _‘pay attention to any mention of the First Order. If their warships even enter your quadrant, run.’_ He memorizes the restaurant’s coordinates just in case he’ll see General Organa again. In case it’s ever safe to return here. In the unlikely case the Resistance either wins or melts into the crowd for good.

Then, he joins the first freighter crew bound off-planet.

There are no windows in the kitchen where he helps out to earn his passage, but even if there had been: Finn still wouldn’t have been able to see the cloaked starfighter trailing in its wind shadow.

:::::::::::::::

Manda is a disaster. When the mayor starts praising his Imperial General grandfather’s exploits on Ryloth, Finn downs his champagne. When he calls for a general draft to discipline the youth, Finn’s already halfway out the building. When he raises his comm to report suspicious activity to his First Order contact, Finn is still an hour from begging a luxury cruiser’s captain for a no-name-no-questions-just-please escape, but the mayor doesn’t get a single word out.

He’s found two days later, stuffed into the party venue’s heavy-duty cleaning droid’s biggest soap tank, a burnt hole through his chest.

:::::::::::::::

A gregarious wookiee apparently passed through Bothawui just two days ago, and Finn asks quietly whether he mentioned his next destination and then takes a ship going the exact opposite way. He tells himself that he can’t jeopardize anyone when he hasn’t shaken the sense that there are yellow eyes right over there in the shadows, watching him. It’s irrational: for all Finn’s instincts have always served him well, there’s no-one following him. He’s been having this feeling for over a while now, intermittently, and nothing’s come of it. Just in case, though…

Besides, Finn doesn’t speak Shyriiwook. It would only be awkward.

It’s best they don’t meet up.

_(He’s seen him bend his waist at a literal ninety-degree angle to cry on General Organa’s shoulder, but Chewbacca is still intimidating as hell.)_

:::::::::::::::

Finn doesn’t notice his shadow for the next two weeks, either. He might have stayed nothing but a strange feeling forever, if it wasn’t for the firefight that Finn is currently locked in.

In a way, Finn was lucky when the businesswoman he tried to recruit betrayed him. The First Order sent six pairs of stormtroopers, not the big war units they ship in boxes but just a standard problem response team. Finn’s definitely caused enough trouble by now to be worth at least fifty and two officers— _just an example, but Rose, BB-8 and him_ did _sneak onto and then off a fully staffed Mega-class Star Dreadnought—_ so they must not have expected to find _him_. Twelve’s better odds than fifty, especially since he already shot five of them.

On the other hand, his planned escape route turned out to be a furniture dumping ground, and he barely managed to avoid getting backed into the eight-meters-high impenetrable trash wall. The back alley he’s in right now is yet another dead end. The speeder he’s hiding behind might burn up if anyone hits the fuel tank. The seven remaining stormtroopers are decent shots, and Finn’s left shoulder aches from two blasts that strafed him. It’s far too late to win them over by argument, though Finn’s nearly desperate enough to try. They’re livid. They recognized him. They called him ‘FN-2187, the traitor.’

One of them just radioed for backup.

Giving himself up so he can escape later is an intolerable risk, but it’s just about the only option Finn has left. That isn’t death, anyway, and he doesn’t want to die. He hasn’t even talked to Poe in seven days, and he’s not seen Rey since the lucky meetup last month. If he dies now, they might not ever know what happened to him, thanks to the sensible cell structure. No-one else will die with him, as he planned, but… he’ll become a question, a what-if-I-hadn’t, a memory too barbed to recount, as soon as Poe checks in. As soon as he tries and doesn’t connect. Even if Poe and Rey attempt to trace his steps, they’ve got next to nothing to go on. To make the paranoia go away, Finn’s been even more careful than normal.

People who are just disappeared _hurt,_ much more than the dead do. Finn can’t let that happen.

But he’s caged in. Three tall walls. Troopers blocking the single street mouth on the right in two practiced offset rows. Door at his back—“C’mon, please”—but stubbornly shut. Another bolt to the shoulder, his blaster-arm this time, but it would’ve hit Finn’s synth-spine if he hadn’t whirled around and this would be the worst possible time to find out how delicate the machinery is. Movement, somewhere behind the troopers. The badly singed speeder won’t power up. Finn pushes the ignition button anyway, over and over, firing one-handed and gritting his teeth against the painful recoil. Seven stormtroopers taking aim to his right. Down, duck right, left, down, and they miss but then so does Finn. Down again. Time to give up on the speeder.

Maybe the Order will want to brag about his capture. That’ll give Finn more time, at least. Might give him a chance. Or, if it doesn’t… a broadcast execution will give Rey and Poe closure.

Movement.

A red lightsaber blade sticks out through the leftmost trooper’s chest.

Behind the dropping corpse, a whirling dervish of red light and fluttering black cloak.

Fuck. The newcomer hacks the rest of the stormtroopers apart, too, presumably, but Finn doesn’t watch. The burning flesh smell rises his gorge, and the red lightsaber… The black clothes. The sudden cold. Shit. Running past is slightly more plausible while his enemies are distracted with each other, but Finn won’t get far. Shooting him? Finn didn’t even stand a chance the last time, but he takes aim just in case. The blasts impact on the wall far above Finn’s head, easily deflected. Bolt to his own temple? Until he loses his blaster, he can still cut out the middleman. He’s gonna die anyway.

_Red lightsaber. Black clothes._

_Kylo Ren._

He’s fucked. He barely survived the head-on confrontation, not by his own doing and with the synthetic spine and the memories still competing to steal every hour of his sleep. This time, Ren won’t pull his strike. Rey won’t come. There’s no way out. The blaster’s useless. The blue lightsaber is gone, and even if it wasn’t, Finn’s not Luke Skywalker. He isn’t Rey. He’s fucked.

And if he’s not dead soon… FN-2187 never paced in front of that cell on the Finalizer. He didn’t enter until Ren had been gone for hours. Even a hint of visible sympathy would have killed their chance at escape. Poe’s never made it more than a few seconds without deflecting into a joke or operations analysis or the daring TIE flight whenever Finn asks him how he’s holding up, whether he’s healing, but who needs words anyway. Finn knows what Ren did. He knows his fate. He aims his blaster—temple, Ren, temple—and shoots. Deflected again.

Finn doesn’t know anything. When it’s his turn, Finn won’t be able to betray his friends. That was the whole point of splitting up.

He planned for this. He knew all along it was coming, or he should have. Getting caught was a danger the moment he chose to stay with the Resistance, but even if he hadn’t: the First Order has won the galaxy. There’s nowhere safe. It’s too easy to mess up. To pick a blocked exit, run off the wrong way, and then you’re dead, or worse. Finn doesn’t know anything but—

_Three comm numbers. His friends. Untraceable. Fifty-four names, or was it fifty-six, and in his panic he could name none of them right now and no-one even joined the Resistance but—Tuanul. Takodana. The Order doesn’t care. All forewarned, at least, whoever they are. Chewbacca’s location, two weeks ago. Rey’s, a month. How much of the Resistance is left, give or take new recruits, and the current strategy, and—_

Something cool and wet connects with Finn’s face. It’s not the expected sizzle of the lightsaber. Reflexively, he licks his lips.

Water. Cold water. Not death.

Finn blinks away the dark spots in his eyes.

The smell’s everywhere now. The troopers are in pieces.

The newcomer is ten meters away, unmoving and with the blade end of his extinguished lightsaber pointing towards the ground. In his extended left hand, he holds an uncapped hydrosack.

The resemblance to Kylo Ren is all but gone.

Still clad in a billowing black cloak, still red and black, but looking out from the hood is an elderly alien man, short, unknown and yet vaguely familiar. With a core accent as soft as any high officer’s he mutters, “Almost too late. I was careless.” Not alarmed, just mildly disappointed. “That backup call connected before I killed him. We must leave.”

A beat.

“I mean you no harm.”

Finn’s still holding up his blaster, he realizes. The old man doesn’t seem at all resentful, though: with his deliberate non-threatening posture and the choice not to approach, he must have expected Finn to be afraid for some reason. Maybe it’s his face, which Finn still feels he’s seen before though he can’t even classify the species. The red-and-black facial pattern is reminiscent of a humanoid skull, with dark patches over the eye sockets and nose tip and hollowing out his cheeks, softened only a little by swirls and rhombs and deep wrinkles. His eyes are bright yellow. Classic aposematism, if Finn still believed the Order’s bogus alien biology lessons, and they probably didn’t invent all their prejudices completely independently from galactic society. Maybe his help's been rejected before. Maybe other people have feared him.

Maybe it’s because he’s a Jedi.

The Jedi have unimaginable power: whether Luke Skywalker was the Hero General of the Rebellion or spine-chiller number one for trooper cadets, he who’ll turn your own bolts against you and blow up the Death Star, a ship just like the one you’re on, blow it up and the people stationed there with it—however he was described, he was always _powerful_. Finn’s always liked him, but he was a little terrifying, the way he just walked out into the salt waste of Crait, so composed and so completely alone, facing an entire army. But Skywalker was the last Jedi—apart from Rey now, and whatever Kylo Ren is—that’s what the Resistance said. That’s why it was so important to find him. Only he could turn the battle against the First Order. Where did this new Jedi come from? Why didn’t he help?

But Finn’s still in a dead-end street. The Order’s still coming for him— _them, now?_ They need to escape. Questions can wait.

“Thank you,” Finn says, fumbling to put away his blaster. “You saved my life, Mister Jedi. Thanks. Do you know—I need a pilot. I need to get very, very far away from here. Fast.”

The Jedi’s sharp teeth glint. Not the wide joy Finn’s seen since his freedom, but it’s definitely a smile: the natural kind Finn sometimes slips back into, that he once thrilled to see glimpses of in-between gulps of food or the minute before the light in the dorms shut off, all crooked and unpracticed and unique from having grown sightless under a helmet. It’s both weirdly comforting and just plain weird, to see it again after so long, and on the face of a Jedi.

“I could help you,” the Jedi says. “I have a ship.”

“Please.”

Another smile. There’s no surprise showing on the Jedi’s face and no reason why there should be, but somehow, it permeates the air. “Follow me. It’s easier if we move underground. The street will soon be swarming with soldiers.”

“Fine by me.”

It’s not quite _fine_ as such, it turns out. They meet no more stormtroopers on the way, or even civilians, for the minute they stay outside. The old Jedi appears to know exactly where he is going, leading Finn down into a sewer tunnel.

He also, however, seems think that the necessary amount of light is _none whatsoever_.

As soon as Finn’s pulled the gully cover above him shut to hide their path, he can’t even see the shape of the hand he tries waving in front of his eyes, let alone the ground. He can feel the ladder he’s climbing down, and then his feet splash when they touch the wet bottom, and it smells pretty okay as far as drainage systems go, and the water’s just ankle-height, but that’s all Finn can make out.

Up ahead, there are soft splashes where the Jedi must be walking. Occasionally, his eyes flare up with the residual light from another drain cover when he turns back to look at Finn, the flickers growing smaller and smaller as he walks away. Tapetum lucidum. The Order always pretended that humans were the superior species, and it’s never been more of a lie than right now. Though maybe he also has more acute nostrils. That would suck down here.

The Jedi’s probably fifty meters down the tunnel already. Finn, taking tiny steps and with one hand at the wall for guidance, has barely left the entrance. At least the chances of active pursuit are minimal. That’s why the Jedi chose this path after all. A breather, and an easy escape. The darkness will protect them.

If it doesn’t kill Finn first.

His toe catches the edge of a heavy object. He bruises his face on the wall, but it’s better than falling into the sewage.

The patter of the Jedi’s boots comes closer again as Finn feels his way around the massive jagged obstacle. “Close your eyes,” his soft voice echoes, now less than ten meters ahead.

“What?”

“Your eyes are useless in the dark, but you do not need them to perceive what is there,” he advises. Easy for him to say. His eyes are reflective, and his species might even have echolocation, with how confidently he is moving up the tunnel. If he’s advising Finn to use a sense he doesn’t even possess, that would be pretty mean. FN-legion had a few instructors like that.

Perhaps it’s just a Jedi thing: it does sound a lot like Rey’s occasional tales of the training she received from Luke Skywalker. _Don’t use your eyes. Use the force._ Very cryptic, no information on how to actually acquire or implement the skill. Not like the force is a more useful hint than echolocation, given Finn’s not a Jedi, but he can work with impossible orders. He can, at least, pretend.

“Okay,” Finn says. Not like he can see anything anyway.

It would probably be really disrespectful to just ask the old Jedi to turn on his fucking _light_ saber.

He closes his eyes and promptly trips over the next rock.

“Focus. Reach out. You are unpracticed in the art of feeling your environment, but it is in its way no different from people. The stones and pipes are not alive, but there is resonance even in matter shaped by sentient hands.”

It’s not a very forgiving terrain. Finn can pretend all he likes that he understood a word of what’s asked of him, but it’s useless when the man can echolocate him stumbling over another pipe. At least no First Order officer is here to get ideas for a new cruel exercise.

The Jedi is a patient instructor. Phasma would have punched Finn by now. He just asks, “Do you know my location?”

Finn nods.

“In ten seconds, tell me where you think I am.”

There’s no splashing this time, even though Finn holds his breath and strains his ears. It’s not a trick question, though: there’s something moving past Finn, and then the instinct honed in decades of battle training raises the fine hairs on his neck.

A little quicker than dignified, perhaps, he turns around. He stares into the darkness. A beat, and the patch of void becomes golden eyes.

“Very good, app—” The syllable melts away so quickly Finn almost believes he imagined it. The Jedi passes him again, still almost soundless. “I saw you fight. You ducked before the bolts were fired. You anticipated their point of impact.”

“Trajectories are easy. I was trained in blaster fights for years. They’d still have shot me without your help.”

A light chuckle. “Knowledge is insufficient without a means of deflecting attacks. No matter. Transfer that knowledge. Your focus was alive to the danger of those bolts. But in a fight, it’s not just the weapons that threaten: a single step backwards can drop you down a generator shaft. The stone you stumble over may leave your defense open to the enemy’s ‘saber. Do not think of it as your terrain. The battlefield is an enemy, a weapon, and a stone no different than a blast. Just as deserving of your focus. Your mind…”

Finn whips his head to the left. Air whooshes past.

“… your fear.”

The stone ricochets off the wall.

“I did it!” The loud echo makes both of them flinch, and so Finn continues in a whisper, “Did you see that? Did you see that?”

He can’t see the Jedi’s answering smile, but he still knows it’s there.

The rest of the tunnel passes quickly, the rush of mastering a new skill pushing Finn along. Who knew it was that easy? He notices a stone right in front of his big toe, then a pipe he would have tripped over three steps hence, a side path blocked off somewhere far inside. The way bends and curves and turns around again. The sections of tunnel get cleaner, and then they fill up with even more debris. A family of seven rats rushes by. An old worm being two meters off notices their approach and floats in the other direction.

On the other end of the sewer path is a narrow empty street. It would look identical to the one Finn just almost died in, if it wasn’t for the Jedi announcing, “We have arrived.”

He has pushed his hood off to reveal a bald head topped with a crown of horns and bright sweat, but more worryingly, he’s listing just slightly to the left. He must have overstretched a muscle during the fight, or gotten injured. For the blink of an eye, the elderly Jedi appears almost frail.

Finn rushes up to help him pull open a heavy door.

Inside, darkness again, everywhere but the first few meters. Finn can barely make out a high-vaulted hall, duracrete walls empty of paint or decorations, floor dotted with piles of garbage. The closest one consists old ships, or at least parts of them, speeders and ovens. It’s the kind of thing that would fill Rey’s eyes with tears of joy. If the chance ever comes—if they don’t both die, and if by a miracle, the Resistance wins—Finn will definitely bring her back here.

“In there.” The Jedi gestures towards something at the very opposite side. “The Nightbrother. The last of her kind.”  He disappears into the hall.

Finn spares a thought for propping up the door with something heavy— _lose sight of the exit and you’re dead_ —but all the trash nearby looks rusted or heavy or squelchy, and he is with a Jedi. He’s never been safer. Besides, he doesn’t need light to navigate anymore, though it’s still slow-going.

The Jedi’s reached his destination when Finn’s still only half-across. A series of grunts and clicks and clatters—on reflex Finn opens his eyes and touches his blaster—and then, a sliver of light. It grows smoothly. Soon, Finn can see him again, working a lever to pull up the rolling shutter that serves as the trash hall’s back wall.

A small red-black cruiser’s parked right by the shutter, looking completely functional and ready to take off, and Finn could cry. He could hug him. He would, if the Jedi wasn’t half a garbage pit away.

“Your ship looks great,” he shouts instead.

All the many pilots and mechanics in his life would be disappointed in him right now, BB-8 included, but it’ll do. Whatever kind of spaceship this is, it looks well-loved. It’s as wide as it is long, fifty meters squared if both forward-sharp wings are included, but only the long two-pronged cylinder in the middle looks fit for people. Not one of the transport ships that Finn’s worked on get around during his mission; there’s no space to put a profitable amount of cargo. It doesn’t really look like one of the military ships that Finn’s used to, either. Much bigger than an X-Wing or TIE, but too tiny to pack a decent number of troops like a shuttle does.

The cockpit looks sort of like a distorted trooper helmet, though whether that’s a good omen or very very bad, who knows.

Poe would, probably. Him and Rose and Rey would have opinions on the model and its provenance and age and its state of relative scruffiness—though it’s still less of a piece of junk than the Falcon—but to Finn, it’s just the kind of ship he’s seen at dozens of shipyards around the galaxy.

He’s seen the exact same paintjob, even.

The exact same scratches marring the red of the left wing.

_… the old man from Rishi._

The drunk from the Alderaanian restaurant. The table-thief. That’s his face. His horn pattern.

Finn’s seen this Jedi before, and he could swear he passed that very ship on Kothlis and Bothawui and Umbara, too. It was on Christophsis. One previous meeting might be discountable as coincidence, though Finn’s not made a habit of lying to himself. He was _right_. His gut, all along, was right. Someone was totally on his trail, he felt it, and here’s plain proof. Four weeks since first non-contact on Rishi, seven planets in-between that Finn chose at random, not one word from the Jedi before today. Just watching. Just following. Until he revealed himself in the flashiest possible way. But why?

The old Jedi doesn’t seem aware he blew his cover. He’s standing motionless at the edge of the shutter, his back to Finn, looking outside. Probably checking the sky for a clean takeoff path.

The smart thing would be to run. Now. Even if he’s a Jedi, and maybe all Jedi are eccentric—Luke Skywalker certainly sounded like a character—but Finn’s been followed, stalked, for weeks, for an unknown purpose. The old man’s distracted and hiding an injury and Finn still has his feet on the ground. He can probably reach the door. He should have kept it open. It’s his one chance at escape, his last, and he should run.

But the smart thing will also get Finn killed, not just probably but one hundred percent. There are stormtroopers outside, far more than Finn could get away from or shoot, and by now they’ll be watching the shipyards and bars and job noticeboards, the very places where Finn could find alternative means of travel. The Order knows that FN-2187 is here, and they’ll send enough troopers to blanket the city. They’ve got the numbers for it.

The old man might be a crazy torture ax murderer.

Kylo Ren’s still a million times worse.

Hell, maybe the Jedi followed Finn because he wants to join the Resistance. It’s not completely impossible. He’s a Jedi. He didn’t come to their aid before, but maybe he had personal reasons. Jedi reasons. Luke Skywalker did, after all, he was gone for decades, and one of him was nearly enough to turn the battle on Crait. Now all the Resistance’s expectations are resting on Rey, and she’s learned so much already, she’s brilliant, but with a second Jedi…

And the _close your eyes_ thing worked. It makes no sense, but it did.

It felt weirdly familiar.

It felt right.

The chance to find out more about that isn’t worth the risk. It’s not worth the risk alone. But if his choice is between trust and certain death anyway…

Finn could recruit this strange Jedi to the Resistance. Maybe with another Jedi by their side, they could actually turn the war around. They could win. They could _live_. Finn won’t have to swallow his dread anymore when Poe calls and talks of the future.

All Finn has to offer is the First Order’s atrocities. He’s never actually managed to convince anyone before.

Still, maybe this will be the one time he doesn’t trip over the past.

_(Twenty-two days ago, the man who later told him about the no-show mechanic showed Finn holos of his children. Playing games, in costume, hiding in the belly of a grand piano. Wrapped around their dad’s neck. Finn ignored the prickle of envy. He learned their names. He looked at little Jeery and bright Agrafell and sickly Zihna, only that’s not who they were anymore: instead, a face in a sea of identically armored kids on identical benches at identical tables with identical meal-kits on them, spaced no more or less than exactly fifty centimeters apart. No hands trying to clear the gap between hard bunk beds at night. Jeering. Fire. Massacres._

_Instead of the recruitment pitch he’d planned in great detail and never once ended up using on anybody, he whispered, ‘Watch your kids at all times. Watch the news. Watch the skies. When you hear the noise of the Star Destroyer, grab your children and run. Don’t look back. Or you will never see them again.’)_

And when the Jedi says no, at least they’ll be off this planet.

Finn’s gonna leave with this man. He owes him his life. It would probably be weird not to introduce himself.

He holds out his hand and says, “Thanks again. I can’t pay you in credits for the journey, Mister Jedi. And I need to go far, not just the next planet.” That might give him time to work on his argument, or maybe connect the Jedi to Poe or General Organa. “I can do anything if you’ve got work, though. I’m—”

He stops just in time. Using an alias is so ingrained it’s almost a reflex now, but the old Jedi’s been stalking him for half a month. Finn’s used at least eight names in that time. And aren’t Jedi able to sense lying, anyway? Is he listening to his thoughts right now? Is that a myth?

It shouldn’t matter: Finn’s obviously running from the First Order, and no-one should fault him for being a little paranoid, not even a Jedi. Besides, it’s him who’s been following Finn. If anything, he’s the shady one here. It shouldn’t matter. Somehow, in the pit in his stomach that tells him whether he’s being watched and when to duck and where the stones were and how scared to be, the pit that’s completely silent right now, stretching out, waiting, he knows it does.

Finn’s been Finn for a hundred and eighty-four days now. Most of this time, he’s been undercover, one-ten he’s been on his own, and he’s probably been referred to as ‘Jero’ or ‘Jems’ more often than he has ever been called _Finn_. That’s his name, but it’s not like anyone else’s: no mother has held him and cooed, ‘Finn my boy.’ No father has used it to call him for dinner. The First Order’s still searching for FN-2187, not Finn. They probably don’t even remember his name, or if they do: they don’t think it’s real enough to put on the bounty. Numbers have always been more solid for them than names.

It shouldn’t matter either way, which one he picks right now.

“My name’s Finn.”

A beat. Maybe the Jedi’s expecting a second name, like all the non-troopers Finn’s ever met apart from Rey have had. Maybe the pause before Finn made his choice was too long, too obvious, too awkward. But the old man’s brow quirks. Slowly, the death’s head of his patterns stretches into the widest smile yet. He reaches for Finn’s hand.

“Your company will suffice. I have been alone so long. It’s been years since I’ve truly spoken to anyone,” he whispers. “I am Maul. Nothing else, just Maul.”

**Author's Note:**

> This is the set-up chapter of a fully plotted six-part series, but I'm an abominably slow writer. I first started toying with this idea pretty soon after my main reaction to TLJ was, so we're going to completely gloss over an escaped former child soldier getting tazed for """"""deserting"""""" an army he never even joined?? And I'm probably the only person who really wants Finn to talk to former Sith apprentices, but hey. That's exactly what fic is for
> 
> Maul is eighty at this point in time, if you're curious. I'm ignoring Twin Suns. In my heart Maul outlives Sidious, no matter what canon says
> 
> Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed it!


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